Why did I let my brother talk me into spending the money our grandmother left us on half a C -class scow? It was a poorly built boat, which was why the owner was trying to unload it. Made at Johnson Boat Works in White Bear Lake out of wood--what wood I haven't a clue as I didn't think to ask at the time--it had weighed too much. Building a wooden boat is never an exact science as this particular boat proved. Rebuilding it to be lighter was, of course, out of the question. The owner's solution was to remove the wooden floor boards and replace them with styrofoam wrapped up with tape. It was an awful arrangement. But my brother wanted that boat and seemed able to overlook both the cosmetic and the functional shortcomings of the heavy boat and it's makeshift flooring. But why did I who hated sailing with my brother who got mean when he was skipping the boat and losing as we always seemed to do go along with his plan? I'd have to say that I actually like my brother when he was pleasant, which he always was when he wanted something and rarely was when he didn't.A C-scow has a 30 foot mast. The sail surface is tremendous. In a big wind, two crew are necessary just to keep the beast from flipping over. Sometimes even three large people hiking out as far as the canvas hiking straps around one ankle would permit couldn't prevent that flipping over. We flipped a lot. We never won a race. Winning, as far as I was concerned, was not even an issue. Not flipping over was my first goal. The second was to merely finish the race without one of the other skippers raising the black protest flag against out boat.
I've watched movies where the main character is charged with taming a wild animal and thought about that boat. It was a wild animal and we never did manage to tame it. Probably because it was lame from outset. The boat's weight and its lousy floorboard arrangements were definitely a handicap. My brother and I didn't need that kind of handicap; we were in over our heads without it.
Posts
